Across his wide array of involvements both on and off-campus, Kyle Lewis-Johnson ’25 aspires to make a lasting impact. From Student Assembly to chemistry research and education to student mentoring and community volunteering, helping others has been a common thread throughout his life.
Lewis-Johnson is a newly-elected Class of 2025 senator this semester, filling a vacancy from the spring 2024 semester. He didn’t originally plan on running due to his busy schedule, but felt inspired to step into the role after encouragement from other senators he had worked with as a member of the SA cabinet.
“Spring passed and there was still this vacancy,” Lewis-Johnson said. “Everybody in Student Assembly, current senators, past senators were like, ‘you should do it, I don’t think anyone else should do it but you.’ And so I ran.”
As a sophomore, Lewis-Johnson served as SA undersecretary for Special Events. Former SA President John Cho ’23 specially created the position for Lewis-Johnson after he expressed an interest in getting involved.
Among other initiatives in this role, he shared his experience organizing a community event to promote STEM engagement across the student body.
“I had an event for different STEM-oriented organizations on-campus to come together and showcase what they do to other STEM organizations, the general public, people inside STEM, outside STEM,” he said. “We just did it in ISC with some pizza, a little bit of decorations, just simple stuff.”
He then became undersecretary for Student Life as a junior, preparing him for his current role as a class senator. Lewis-Johnson has hit the ground running with several initiatives passed this semester, including the bill which allowed seniors to receive their regalia for graduation pictures before construction on the Sir Christopher Wren Building begins this winter.
Lewis-Johnson expressed his pride in spearheading a bill to organize a career-advising event for seniors at the Cohen Career Center earlier this month.
“A good amount of seniors were able to learn more about what their next steps could be, getting their resumes and CVs polished up,” Lewis-Johnson said. “They talked to a lot of people in terms of like: ‘When should I start looking for a job, when should I start looking for internships, what opportunities are out there for me?’”
Lewis-Johnson’s boundless passion for chemistry has been a core tenet throughout his college journey. As a chemistry major, his freshman year research included designing an all-new undergraduate organic chemistry lab in collaboration with a professor.
“I basically created a lab where you could extract caffeine from an energy drink, brewed tea or brewed coffee, and you could test to see whether or not you had caffeine,” he said. “And I made that from scratch.”
In 2022, he presented his lab design at the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers annual conference.
Since then, Lewis-Johnson has won two national awards at the same conference, including the Northeast Undergraduate Rising Star Award this September for his undergraduate research on eliminating wasteful solvents from pharmaceutical products.
He attributes his enthusiasm for chemistry research to a childhood love of LEGOs.
“Being able to just make anything out of LEGOs kind of interested me,” Lewis-Johnson said. “I realized that as I got into my chemical career, I love making things. Chemistry is all about making things. So I wanted to venture into a lab where I could make more chemicals, make more things that are useful to us.”
Lewis-Johnson’s desire to make chemistry education both accessible and engaging led him to design a virtual reality tool for students. The software brings classroom concepts into the visual-spatial realm, transforming learning into a game-like experience.
“Who the hell doesn’t want to learn a chemistry concept via a virtual reality gamification?” he said. “We do Diels-Alder reactions, looking at molecules in a new way like spatially, because chemistry at its foundation is a visual field. So we as chemists said, ‘we need to try and see if we can flesh this out in a more physical, orientational way.’”
In his freshman and sophomore years, Lewis-Johnson served as outreach coordinator for the College’s chapter of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers. He has served as vice president since last year.
His early involvement helped grow the chapter from one executive member to a coalition of several dedicated chemists earning awards on the national stage.
“I saw Black people doing chemistry, and I said, ‘I want to do this,’” he said. “Most people at the end of September in their freshman year were taking exams and stuff like that, and I was taking exams. I was also outreaching as an exec member, because when I came in, it was one person and she was the only person, she was the president. And so we all kind of helped her out and became really close-knit.”
Lewis-Johnson is currently applying to graduate school for chemistry, with the goal of becoming a professor. Through a mix of teaching and research in his future career, he hopes to make chemistry appealing to students from all academic disciplines.
“I want to be able to teach people chemistry, to research and then teach people about the chemistry that I’m interested in, and then also do chemistry outreach, STEM outreach,” he said. “Just let anyone and everyone know that you have a place in this field, even though you might feel ostracized from it.”
He highlighted that even the smallest engagement with the field matters in the long-run.
“You could be an English major, sociology major, French major, public policy, whatever,” he said. “But you can still find these things interesting and also get involved in it in very little ways. You do a science experiment, you’re an amateur chemist.”
Lewis-Johnson also works as a fellow for the Sharpe Scholars program. After being a Sharpe Scholar as a freshman, he returned to mentor students and organize action research pathways, which facilitate community-based research projects for scholars.
“I helped them get involved with an action research pathway,” he said. “Sometimes they work with the Office of Community Engagement and with local community partners like the Bloomsburg Growers and the House of Mercy.”
Lewis-Johnson’s action research pathway connects students with the First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, aiming to expand knowledge on the city’s Black history.
“I did mine with the First Baptist Church, and we just kind of got people involved with African-American history,” he said. “What it’s like to be an African American in Williamsburg, what that history is like for African Americans in Williamsburg and really all throughout the world.”
Lewis-Johnson emphasized the importance of diversifying one’s academic portfolio outside of their major. Although he loves chemistry more than anything, he thoroughly enjoys analyzing English literature, and has taken several classes at the College.
“This is weird, I’m a chemistry major who takes English classes for fun,” he said. “I love a good English class. I love taking any class that’s not in chemistry. I love chemistry, I’d love to do it as a career, but I also need to diversify my mind. William and Mary is the place to do it.”
Lewis-Johnson sometimes wishes he had auditioned for an a capella group to further explore his love for singing.
“Crazy enough, I don’t know why I didn’t do it,” he said. “I was like, ‘damnit’, when I think about it in hindsight. But I should have joined one of the a capella groups. Granted, when I first got to campus, I was like, the Gentleman of the College are so cool. But I never did it.”
He hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a graduate or even chemist-choir in his future.
“Graduate school choir, something. Literally, [a chemist-choir] would be amazing.”
